Double Fine Bundle

Amnesia Fortnight is how Double Fine turns creative people into games—everyone on staff is hit on the head with a brick or some other amnesia-inducing device and spends two weeks prototyping new ideas. It's how Costume Quest and Stacking were greenlit, and last year Double Fine introduced us to the process by letting us vote on concepts in its first Humble Bundle collaboration. Those prototypes, and a few more, are now available again through the current Humble Double Fine Bundle.

Along with Psychonauts, Costume Quest, Stacking, and Brütal Legend, beating the average price (currently $8.15) will now also get you Windows-only concept games Autonomous, Black Lake, Hack n’ Slash, Spacebase DF-9, The White Birch, Happy Song, Brazen, and the Costume Quest prototype.

Also added are the prototypes' soundtracks, as well as 2 Player Productions' Amnesia Fortnight 2012 Documentary, which was originally released as daily video updates during the two-week prototyping crunch. Check out the trailer below:

“Double Fine?” someone somewhere has probably said at some point maybe. “Who do they think they are, claiming to be twice as fine as the rest of us? I’m no fool. I don’t believe it for a second.” But, Mr Somewhere, what if you’re wrong>? Then you’ll just look silly, your only solace coming in the fact that going off the grid in shame would be simple, given that you have the least Google-able name of all time. Clearly, the only solution to your conundrum is a test. You need to play most of Double Fine’s back catalog, but your gleaming shield of skepticism must be kept aloft. Buying these games full price would only create suspicion that you might harbor legitimate interest. We can’t have that. The solution? A new Humble Double Fine Bundle. It’s offering all of the laugh factory’s PC games except Iron Brigade on a pay-what-you-want basis, and a pre-purchase of Broken Age if you’re willing to part with $35. Exceedingly strange, vaguely arousing video after the break.

The launch of The Humble Double Fine Bundle means that for a limited time you can get Psychonauts for the low price of whatever you want. You'd be a psycho not to take that offer!

I'm so sorry about that, but it's true. And for whatever price you choose, you'll also get Costume Quest and Stacking. Pay more than the average ($8.29 at the time of writing) however, and Double Fine will throw in an extra umlaut in the form of Brütal Legend.

Pay $35 or more, and you'll get all the games plus a "slacker backer" pre-order of Double Fine's Kickstarted adventure game, Broken Age. The post-Kickstarter backing program grants you the following:

Access to making-of documentary episodes in HD Access to private forums featuring concept art, development updates, team and backer discussions Participation in the closed beta A Steam code for the finished game on PC & Mac, or a DRM-free download on PC, Mac, or Linux

The bundle also features the Psychonauts and Brütal Legend soundtracks, and all games are available on Steam or as DRM-free downloads for Windows, Mac, and Linux. As always with Humble Bundles, you can partition your contribution any way you like to support Double Fine, charities, and the organizers, Humble Bundle, Inc.

Oh, and for a less-humble contribution—$75—you'll also get a classy Double Fine t-shirt. Unfortunately, the shirt is not available as a download, but worldwide shipping is included.

We're a week away from the PC release of Brütal Legend. Three and a half years late, but considering true metal originates from the Edge of Time, that's not too bad. But it seems, just as we seem like we're reaching the end, our blood brothers at Double Fine might have more to give for the rocktastic franchise... and maybe even Psychonauts, while they're at it. In an interview with RPS, Tim Schafer hinted at some possible DLC, and didn't leave a full expansion out of the question.

“I think is the most plausible to me,” Schafer told Rock Paper Shotgun, in reference to new Brütal Legend content for the PC. “Because single-player requires content, which means reengaging all the voice actors—which is something that was a lot easier for EA to pay for. Also, reengaging music licensing. I’d love to do that too, but I think that would involve more funding than we have cash on hand to do.”

While DLC is all fine and dandy (and in a single instant, I lost all of the metal cred from the references earlier in the article), a full-blown sequel would rock even harder. Schafer says it could happen, but they're likely to look to their less blast-beat-driven franchise first.

"It’s been longer since Psychonauts and we wouldn’t have to do any music licensing,” he said. “So we could probably afford to do it more if we got some funding. I feel like a Brutal sequel would cost twice as much as Psychonauts. It’s easier to imagine Double Fine doing a sequel to Psychonauts. But for creative reasons, there’s no preference of one over the other.”

So there you have it. The eyes of the world are on Double Fine, and only time (what is time?) will tell what might emerge.

If you find all the metal references in this article, tweet at AsaTJ and I'll tell everyone how special you are.

Around this time last year, Psychonauts fans had reason to get excited after Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson suggested throwing a few (million) bucks in Double Fine's direction to make a sequel. Valentine's is a great time for breaking hearts, though, so it's only fitting that Persson recently dispelled that notion.

"I somewhat naively thought 'a couple of million' was two million," Persson said on Reddit (via VentureBeat). "I had no doubt in my mind that a Psychonauts 2 would earn that money back easily. Turns out they wanted 18 million dollars, haha. I don't have the time at the moment to even try to get educated enough to make an 18 million dollar deal. Perhaps in some distant future when I'm no longer trying to make games, I could get into angel investing. I've made one private investment into a game so far, at $100K, and it's frankly a lot more work than I thought."

The comment from Tim Schafer that kicked off the proceedings mentioned "a few million dollars," but Persson later reportedly said $13 million was a "can do" proposition. It may be disappointing, but it's hard to blame Persson for his hesitance. $18 million would be a large chunk out of almost anyone's budget, even at his 2012 earnings of more than $100 million.

How we had hoped to see Pat Garratt enjoying a hearty feast of broiled denim and shallow-fried zipper, but it was not to be. The editor of VG247 last year swore to eat his own trousers in the event Minecraft man Markus ‘Notch’ Persson made good on his talk of funding a sequel to Double Fine’s Psychonauts. Alas, Persson has recently confessed that such a thing is not currently possible/desirable, as Double Fine’s estimated $18 million budget for the game was beyond even his mighty means (or, at least, what he considered to be a lucrative investment of his mighty means). (more…)

It was almost a year ago to the day when Notch publicly proposed to Tim Schafer. No, not that sort of proposal. This one: "Let’s make Psychonauts 2 happen."

But any plans for a follow up to Tim Schafer's weird and inventive platformer were put on hold when Double Fine launched an adventure game Kickstarter. Now, in a thread on Reddit thread, the Minecraft creator has revealed that he'll no longer be funding a Psychonauts sequel.

"I somewhat naively thought "a couple of million" was two million. I had no doubt in my mind that a Psychonauts 2 would earn that money back easily," Notch writes. "Turns out they wanted 18 million dollars, haha."

While the Reddit thread was celebrating Minecraft's success - Notch himself made over $100 million from the game in 2012 - he admits that the complexity of making such an investment would have been too much of a time constraint.

"I don't have the time at the moment to even try to get educated enough to make an eighteen million dollar deal. Perhaps in some distant future when I'm no longer trying to make games, I could get into angel investing."

"I've made one private investment into a game so far, at 100k, and it's frankly a lot more work than I thought."

A statement by Double Fine said the company was "excited about the prospect of making a sequel to Psychonauts, but we’re currently focused on making our Kickstarter game and haven’t been able to budget it out. Once we get around to it, we’ll likely explore alternative funding methods that will require multiple sources to make it a reality."

You can read more about Minecraft's success in our Making Of feature. It includes Markus Persson saying things like, "I think I was already fucking rich by the time I realised, 'I’m gonna be fucking rich.'"

Freaks of the night, rejoice! Steam has unleashed monster savings on ghoulish (and not so creepy) titles. From now until about the time all the pumpkins are smashed*, over 80 titles (including The Walking Dead, Bioshock, Left 4 Dead, and many more) are available at prices so low, its scary.

Yesterday, you probably read the first part of my chat with Valve’s Erik Wolpaw and Double Fine’s Anna Kipnis. If not, it’s right here- but FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY. By which I mean until the Internet ceases to exist, which, you know, could happen someday. Anyway, in today’s installment, we branch out a bit from yesterday’s story-centric beat. Valve’s newfound love of wearable computing, virtual reality, heaps behind-the-scenes info on Portal, crowd-sourcing, and more are all on the docket. OK, there wasn’t actually any sort of docket involved. I’m not entirely sure why I said that.>

The following issues have been fixed:- The HUD was being cut off in certain resolutions (particularly 4x3 aspect ratios).- Player stats were displayed as 0 when changing resolutions. The stats were always stored correctly, just displayed wrong.- In multiplayer, the game continues when one player alt-tabs or loses focus. Previously, if one player paused the game by alt-tabbing, it would pause everyones game.- The game now starts up in the same resolution as your desktop, rather than trying to switch to 1280x720. If youve already played the game, though, it will still use your current settings.